Notifications for successful automated builds to each team member

Question

We are just integrating Visual Studio Team Services as our new workflow and setting up automated builds on commits to master. Currently the individual who commits to master and

Answer 1

Maybe node-build-monitor could be interesting for you. We use it for our teams on a dedicated screen. But you can open it in a browser tab and enable desktop notifications, too.

It's open source with a lots of contributers and support for many services.

https://marcells.github.io/node-build-monitor

Answer 2

AnyStatus

AnyStatus is a notification tool that comes as a Visual Studio add-in, or stand-alone tray icon (desktop app) that will notify upon status of build changes.

It has support for many Continuous Integration systems, including TFS vNext.

Here's is the configuration screen for adding a new project:

Here is the status screen, which appears when clicking the tray icon:

Here is the tray icon (immediately after triggering a build):

The tray icon shows a tick when all builds are OK, and a red X when at least one has failed. It shows a 'play' icon when at least one build is in progress.

Answer 3

Notifications

The VSTS Build Succeeded notification can be customized to report only on certain statuses using the Filter Criteria options, by creating the subscription for a team or group the notification will be sent to all members of the group:

If you need more advanced filters, consider routing your notification to an alternate email address and point that to IFTTT or Microsoft Flow. Or using the Build notification step in Microsoft Flow directly.

Visual Studio CD tools

The VSTS CD Tools integrate build notification directly into Visual Studio. This results in a toast notification whenever you have Visual Studio open:

Catlight

Another great tool to get build notifications is Catlight, it runs from the task tray and will even notify you when Visual studio isn't open:

Siren of Shame

And a 4th option is Siren of Shame, which also offers integration with a USB emergency light that will start blinking when the build fails:

Answer 4

If anyone is getting the dreaded "An error occurred while sending the request." with Catlight, try running it as administrator. Fixed it for us.